AmyUD06

Far too many instances of the word "remove."

As usual, impressive use of support parts to create scenery elements, however. Unfortunately, also as usual, the coaster itself is blah. I say this on every ride you post, but you have the mechanics of the game down and your support-construct scenery is top-notch. You really should try building something other than these 10mph "jet" coasters.

My guess is that the entire track section that spans the two supports will be connected on the ground, then lifted up with multiple cranes then put into place. But I know nothing about construction/engineering so I could be completely wrong.

Why does everyone think SFA should go? I found it to be a very nice park, and it's in a very large Metropolitan area. With a little more investment and advertising and non-apathetic staff and a full time police force, they could be the dominant over King's Dominion. Fix'd.

In addition to the above comments: -Too many trains for the amount of block sections. Getting stopped on the lift is never fun.

There is. The button I circled below adds a new track node prior to the one indicated as the "First" node by the purple cone.

+infinity to suggestions to make small out-and-back coasters. (In this program) Intamins are one of the toughest coaster types to make smooth (except may B&M Inverts). Start Did the idea ever occur to put in a brake run (even if not a block section) BEFORE the turn towards the station? That would eliminate the death turn I highlighted below, even if you didn't want to try banking it. Everyone here is trying to help you; don't be so defensive. Seriously look at the pictures from your ride I highlighted below and try to help me understand how you thought either of these were acceptable or "pretty good because it's better than your past stuff." I'm not trying to be a prick, but you are not seeming very accepting of much-deserved criticism. Mods: Sorry about the size, but at 800x600 high-res users wouldn't be able to read the G readout.

Did you even ride this before uploading it? Wow. Yeah, everyone's coasters suck at first...but some of those transitions look like they had zero effort and test riding put in to them, and what's the excuse for the 10g lateral unbanked turn at the end? I also am amused by the over-supporting of everything except the top hat, which is horrifically undersupported. In your defense, I am going to go against the grain here and say that using pre-fabbed elements is not the end of the world. Real coaster designers do the same thing, and then tweak them to fit the current application. There are only so many ways to make a loop/zero-G/cobra/top hat/etc etc. Below is the first coaster I felt was good enough to post about. It has a lot of pre-fabbed elements, and a minimal amount of pre-fabbed supports, but you'll notice that I took the time to make the transitions as smooth as possible. Turbulance v1.0 (Arrow Compact).nltrack

+1 for the back, especially if you leave a nice gab between yourself and the lap bar.

Instead of connecting two beams/tubes to the same node, Make each beam/tube have their own nodes, and then overlap them.

What I do is complete a part of the coaster, then press the "c" key to complete the coaster, test it in the sim for g's and keep repeating until the element is nice. Alternatively, you could set the coaster type to "shuttle" (and set trains to "1") which will allow it to run in the simulator without a complete circuit.

I greatly miss the original station for the Coaster (aka Thunderhawk) at Dorney. Curved loading platform, no air gates, queue line running around the bumper cars, the tunnel below said bumper cars before the lift hill. Then they had to go and screw up the ride with the new station that puts the loading platform back before the transfer track, which necessitated the change from lift-skid brakes to the modern clamp-on-fin style and the HORRIBLE trim on the final bunny hills. It used to be awesome flying into the ending tunnel into the building, hitting the skids and stopping 20-30 feet from the train that was in the loading section (if the ride ops were on their game, that train would already be gone and they'd slide you right into the loading section without coming to a complete stop). Sadly it doesn't seem as if any pictures of it exist anywhere on the internet.

And the mysterious DE State Fair Coaster. Any ideas?

Those stairs look more like an electrical conduit rack to me...like this: http://number-one-electric.com/Vertical%20Conduit%20Rack.jpg

With the recent news about BGE removing Big Bad Wolf at the end of the summer, I decided to take a trip down there. Ended up going alone due to the short notice. I hadn't been there since 1997, and wasn't quite sure what to expect. I hit the road at around 5:30 AM on Tuesday and took the scenic route (US-13 using the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel) from northern Delaware down to Virginia, namely to avoid the messes that are the Baltimore and DC beltways. Five hours later, I pull into the entrance road to the park and am faced with quite a backup. I began to get worried about park traffic, but it ended up not being a big deal in the end. A hold up at the main entrance due to their firearm-storage system not functioning properly delayed my entry by 45 minutes, but a supervisor in Guest Relations made it right with an exit pass for Big Bad Wolf. Head in, use the exit pass, get a ride on the 2nd row. I work my way around the park in a counter-clockwise loop, hitting all of the coasters (all ride reviews at the end) and finally back to BBW. Waited for the front row, and then headed out to check in to my hotel and grab a bite to eat at around 4:00. Got back to the park around 6:30 and took in the “Emerald Beat” Irish dance show, which was good but far too short for how far apart the show times are spaced. Headed back to BBW and began the marathoning. Alternated rides on the back and front rows for another 4 rides, the final being a night ride on the front row. Satisfied, I made my way out of the park (picking up some souvenirs on the way) to beat the rush went back to the hotel and crashed. Wednesday morning I began my trek back to Delaware. Along the way, I saw that the Delaware State Fair appeared to have a coaster. From the road, it looked like a Schwarzkopf Looping Star, but upon closer inspection it was just a Ring of Fire and some unknown portable coaster. Didn't go in, but maybe one of you can identify it by the photos below. Ride Reviews: -Alpengeist: 20 minute wait. This was the new ride the last time I was at the park, and was just as good as ever. Rode the back row, nice a forceful. Probably tied with Raptor for my favorite B&M Invert. Raptor is a more forceful ride with a better layout, IMHO, but the scenery and some elements bring Aplie up to mark. -Loch Ness Monster: 4 train wait. Front row ride, good as always. Forgot how big the tunnel helix was. Great operations got the trains as close to crossing in the interlocking loops as possible since they added the trims. -Griffon: 25 minute wait. Front row, edge seat. This was my first time on any B&M Dive Machine, and I have to say the hold and the drop was awesome. Honestly the ride was kind of boring after that. I'd like to see B&M do more with the drop gimmick, maybe use a narrower train to enable a better layout. The splashdown was cool when watching from aside, but while on the ride it was just like any other braking section and IMHO added nothing to the actual ride experience. -Apollo's Chariot: 20 minute wait, back row. First time on this coaster, and I liked it. Decent pops of air and I liked the helix and the zig-zag at the end, but nothing screamed “great” about this ride. -Big Bad Wolf: Exit-pass walk on (2nd row), 35 minutes (front row), 20 minutes (back row), 20 minutes (front row), 2 train wait (back row), 3 train wait (front row). Awesome as always, and there's not much more to say about this ride. Operations were hit or miss. In the afternoon they were great, sometimes with ZERO stacking while running 3 trains, but in the evening the ride ops seemed to be more concerned with when who was going on break and ended up with all trains stacked on more than one occasion. Either way, the ride will certainly be missed. Coaster Counts: -BBW x6 -Apollo x1 -Alpengeist x1 -LNM x1 -Griffon x1 -Grover's (whatever) x0 Non-coasters: None Park food eaten: None And for some reason, my photos appeared in the proper order in the preview, but not in the final thing. If you care about sequence, just scroll to the bottom then scroll up.[/i][/b] Man do I hate waking up this early... This was my "scenery" most of the way of the scenic route. This, and suburban shopping centers in southern Delaware and Maryland. Entrance to the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel. I don't know why but this thing is cool to me. Going into the light... Almost there. This doesn't look too appealing. Stuck in traffic, might as well take some pictures. On the way to BBW, couldn't pass up some photo ops. And why I'm here. And again. I still don't know what this is like, and wasn't spending time to find out that day. Forgot how good you were. Though the trees. No caption needed. Going down. Hello there Nessie. You didn't get much love from people today... I suck with captions. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. 3 coasters, 1 picture. Apollo was next, but photo ops from inside the park are limited so this one is here by itself. One more ride before I go to check in at the hotel. Took some more of Apollo on the way back in. The inside of the theater for the Emerald Beat show. Back to BBW for the final four rides. Farewell, old friend.

Standard Operating Procedures Oh, trust me, working in LE I know what a SOP is, I was asking what sort of SOP he could've possibly been referring to.[/i]

If the OEM is defunct (like so many people seem to think Arrow is - they aren't) they can. Even if not, they certainly don't need approval of the OEM unless it's still warrantied in some shape or form. If the OEM isn't supporting the product, they have no say in what an end-user does with it. What you're proposing there is like saying that if Ford says you can't use aftermarket parts on their cars, you can't use your car period if you do or that it now somehow becomes "illegal" or "unsafe" from that in and of itself. SOP...what SOP? Yes, insurance and/or government inspectors will still have to look over the ride. What's the big hurdle there? That's what testing is for. I'm surprised it's only been brought up a few times, but the case of Steel Phantom at Kennywood is a prime example of where the "they can't modify it/replace parts) because Arrow isn't around or says it's okay" argument fails. Kennywood is a much smaller park, with a much smaller budget, but have (over the course of several years) re-trained and re-tracked almost the entire ride with Morgan parts. Anyone who thinks BGE couldn't do the same with BBW is insane. I'm also quite surprised that there haven't been more arguments of "just be happy the park is still open since InBev once said they didn't want anything to do with the parks," knowing this site. And BTW, Arrow and all of it's assets, including trademarks, patents, and equipment designs were absorbed into S&S. If S&S choose not to supply parts for Model X anymore, then they can't tell parks that they're not allowed to seek parts anywhere.

Can't get parts for trains? Vekoma trains. Can't get parts for brakes? Vekoma. Can't get electronics? Custom. Can't get parts for the lift hill system? Any halfway decent fabricator could mesh any electric motor to it. The only half-way valid "mechanical reason" they may have is structural integrity, but even that is repairable. Vekoma SFCs use the same gauge track. Everyone says "they understand the reasoning." There has been no reasoning. Just "it's old." Coasters don't have "born-on-dating" or "expiration dates," It's all up to how much effort the park wants to put into maintaining them. And for a coaster with consistently high ridership and no major problems affecting current operations, I can't see why they wouldn't keep this ride. I'd much rather see them spend $10-15m refurbing this ride, if it even needs it, than put up some new B&M. I'm sure I'm not alone. BBW and LNM are the signature rides of this park. When you think about this park, you don't think of Griffon, Alpengeist or...you know, off the top of my head I can't recall any other coasters they have. And that's sad. I'm torn. Part of me really wants to go this year to get a final ride. Part of me wants to give the park the shaft and deny them my business. Unfortunately it doesn't answer anything the press release didn't say, except the part about LNM being "safe for now because we can't think of anything better to do with the land." In all likelyhood it won't do much, but it certainly couldn't hurt. What would it hurt? Someone loses a few minutes of their life writing a letter or e-mail. I don't mean to sound like an ass, but is there ever a time that you DO feel voicing concerns to a park is appropriate? Negative park experience? "You went on a busy day/had a rare bad experience/should've looked at the website to realize Q-bots are a ripoff before you went to the park/etc." Disagree with ride removal/installation? "They're pros and know much better than you." You seem like a complete apologist and in your mind no park can ever do wrong (unless it's Hard Rock or outside of the US). Makes one wonder about that line at the bottom of every page about being " in no way affiliated" with the companies. Anyway, if it's making the front page of local news there's a lot more than a few websites of "whiny coaster enthusiasts" that are disenchanted about this. And I'd say a large part of their successful formula is NOT removing major rides that still draw large crowds. You're right, we don't. What we do know is that there plenty of land available for them to use if they wanted to.

IIRC, the rules for the Replace Laser contest were: -No inverted or hyper coasters of any type. -Max height of 205 feet. -Track must stay within blue box. -Supports CANNOT enter purple box. -No terraforming allowed I think that was it...

Not necessarily, if they use multiple block sections.

Just keep it on you in a pocket. If the phone is really worth the ridiculous prices Apple charges for that feature-deprived gimmick, it can handle a little splash.

My guesses: -3 Inversions -90 degree drop -55mph top speed -2480 feet of track -4 negative G's going around that outside loop. -77ft peak height.

Are you going on a weekday? There's no way you could possibly need two days to do this park. I went last year on the Wednesday before 4th of July and rode every coaster and some flats by 4 PM (got there no more than 15 minutes after opening at 10). And weather was great. Granted that was without Diamondback, but that will add an 1-1.5 hours at most to the trip. Even if you were to do their water park and re-ride some coasters, you should be fine with one day.

All of my rides on both Wicked Twister and Voodoo/Possessed have been different. I've seen no consistency at all.

Andyuk: I see where you might think that, but the forces acting on the supports for a slow-moving section of the course like a lift hill would still be vertical (gravity and gravity alone), and not along a slant like your images imply. The image on the left would put a lot more stress on the joint between the footer and the beam.